Many people today have more than one telephone number where they can be reached, such as a home number, a cell number, a work number, etc. In order to reach a person, a caller sometimes has to make multiple calls. For example, a calling party may make an unsuccessful attempt to reach a called party at their home number (e.g., the call is not answered or the number is busy), and may then try to reach the called party at their cellular number. If the attempt to reach the called party via the cellular number is unsuccessful, the calling party may try to reach the called party at their work number. Such a process can be frustrating, time consuming, and costly for the calling party.
Sometimes a called party may use a locating service at the terminating end of a call to define how a received call will be handled. For example, a subscriber to a locating service may have calls to a home number ring first and then, if unanswered, the call can be forwarded to a cell number. However, such services are available only for call recipients (e.g., terminating services).